


Skinned Knees

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Amusement Park, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:25:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach is a grad student working at an amusement park for the summer, and there he meets single-dad!Chris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skinned Knees

**Author's Note:**

> This was a timed writing written during the Pinto Getaway, with the prompts "amusement park AU" and "please don't cry." It's not a ~complete fic, but posting for posterity anyway!

It’s hot as balls and Zach hates every single human being in the world. The car he wanted to buy at the end of the summer may not be worth the suffering, no matter how much he despises taking the bus back and forth to campus every day. By the time it hits 2 p.m., by the time he has watched the four hundredth kid bound off the carousel and almost fall on their face in the rush to get back to their parents, he wants to bash his own brains out. Goddamn the job market for being the way it is. Goddamn his mentor for giving that TA position to Zach’s cute blonde classmate instead of him. 

He doesn’t even get to operate a good ride. There are three roller coasters in the park, and at least if he was on one of them, he might get the opportunity to make eyes at some of the cute college boys who show up in droves during the summer. Working the carousel, the best luck he has is catching the eye of a middle-aged single dad, and those really aren’t his type. Much like his professor, he has a taste for the young blonde ones. They just disagree on the genders. Unfortunately, the only hot guys who ride the carousel are the ones who think it’s funny, and who spend the whole time making the kids around them nervous and making Zach want to punch them all in the teeth.

He almost makes it to closing time without incident. His red polo is stuck to the sweat of his back, and he has already started daydreaming about getting home and getting into the shower—the best part of each day. But just as the last ride stops and kids start flooding for the exit, the inevitable happens. A little girl with blonde pigtails and a red plaid dress is running by his podium, a huge smile on her face, when she trips over her bright white sandals and goes down hard to the ground. Zach stares for a breathless moment. Sometimes they’re resilient. Sometimes they bounce right back up again and resume their trek toward their parents as if nothing had happened. Unfortunately, not this time. After no more than three silent moments, the girl sits back on her knees, looks down at her bloody hands, and lets out a mournful wail.

Zach winces as he steps down from the platform and rushes to her side, squatting down next to her and trying to school his intense features into something soft and reassuring.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he says. “Please don’t cry.”

Already he’s going into his pocket for his assortment of themed bandaids. This girl looks like a kitty cat person, so he rifles through his fistfull until he finds the Hello Kitty ones, then reaches out with one hand to touch her small shoulder and get her attention.

“Look, I’m going to make it all better. Then we’re going to find your mom, and—”

“Kelly!”

The voice is right behind Zach, and he knows what’s about to happen before he even turns around. His whole body tenses up as he prepares for the confrontation, one that seems to happen to him every other day. Kids always fall down—it’s an amusement park and they’re excited, for fuck’s sake—and parents always seem to find a way to blame it on him, like he personally tripped them. It’s easier than blaming themselves, he guesses. Easier than admitting that they should have gone on the ride with their kid or they should have taught them not to run on concrete. Easier than admitting that the world is a dangerous place and you can’t protect your child from every skinned knee.

Determined to look as helpful as he can, Zach takes one of the little girl’s hands into his own and shows her the bandaids with the other. “Here,” he says. “We’re going to fix it.”

“What happened?” Now the voice is right next to him. Zach takes in a deep breath and holds it, then turns to look.

And his mouth drops open.

The guy is drop-dead gorgeous. He looks too young to be a dad, can’t be any more than twenty-three or twenty-four, with eyes the color of the cloudless summer sky overhead, a masculine jaw peppered with stubble, and these soft-looking, kissable lips. He’s wearing a too-small white t-shirt with a stretched out collar and a Lakers ball cap, just like half the frat boys in the park, but somehow he makes it look better than all of them. This has to be a little sister or something, right? Surely he can’t be this girl’s father.

But she opens her mouth and wails, “Daddy!” and squirms away from Zach to fling herself into the man’s arms, no doubt leaving bloody handprints on the back of his shirt.

“I-I’m sorry,” Zach stammers, attempting to recover from his shock long enough to forestall the coming lecture. When the man turns to him though, he looks surprisingly understanding.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It was an accident.”


End file.
